Signature Exteriors

Holiday Home Decorating

Holiday Home Decorating: Protecting Your Roof

‘Tis the season(s) for holiday home decorating, and we are just as excited as you are! Whichever holiday you’re decorating for this season, it’s vital to protect your roof while you’re decorating. Lights and inflatables are entertaining, and we wholeheartedly support all holiday home decorations. Still, we’re here to provide roofing education, so we think home, and business owners must know how to decorate for the holidays and prevent future roof leaks.

Holiday Home Decoration Installation

First things first, safety! It’s essential to take steps to make sure you’re decorating for the holidays as safely as possible. Don’t decorate alone. Decorating with a partner or team helps save time and ensures holiday decorations go up safely. Having a friend hold the ladder for you, hand you a string of lights, and pass you the appropriate tools will help you as you start to decorate your home for the holidays. Frustration due to having to go up and down the ladder by yourself may cause you to rush through the decoration installation. Hurrying through that process can increase your risk of getting injured or causing severe roof damage – increasing your likelihood of needing roof leak repairs later down the road.

Be prepared, have all of the holiday decorations and tools set out and ready for installation before starting. Planning will help holiday decorating go by smoothly. If you need to walk on the roof, choose a pair of shoes with a good grip and make sure your ladder is placed firmly on solid, level ground.

The Don’ts:

  1. Don’t use staples – instead, use clips! Staples damage roofing materials and siding materials, creating tiny holes that allow water intrusion through the material you’ve stapled. Water damage degrades roofing and siding materials. If you’ve ever dealt with a roof leak before, you’ll know that the smallest amount of water damage can be costly, both financially and to the overall health of your roofing system. Other items for you to avoid using as roof fasteners are nails and screws. Clips can be attached to your home gutter system and are easy to remove. Your local Home Depot should have great options for any style you need. It’s still important not to add too much weight to your clips to avoid damaging your gutters. One strand of lights per clip is, generally, ideal.
  2. Using holiday inflatables? Weigh them down! It would be best not to put statues or figurines on your roofing system. Their weight can cause damage to the shingles underneath them. However, don’t let a lightweight inflatable fool you – they can cause damage to your roof too! If you have a steep roof, anything over 40 degrees, placing inflatables is considered a safety hazard, and they’d be better placed on the ground. Avoid placing holiday inflatables near chimneys and power lines for obvious fire-hazard reasons. Be conscious of placing any statue or inflatable over any vents too.
  3. Don’t get shocked (when you have the best holiday home decorations in town!) Strings of lights, spotlights, holiday inflatables – they usually require a power source. We recommend using a portable outdoor circuit. Be careful not to overload your breaker, a potential fire hazard.
  4. Don’t rush (the install or the tear-down). If you put a lot of time into safely installing home holiday decorations, remember to put time into taking them down too. We receive so many calls over the holidays from homeowners who hastily ripped their lights down…but ended up taking a stretch of the gutter with them. Take the time to remove each decoration clip individually – trust us. It’ll be less time-consuming than calling around for gutter repairs on New Years Day.

 

Holiday Home Decoration
Photo from My Life and Kids